


And Though You Closed Your Eyes

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: All The Things I Did Not See [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Guns, Kidnapping, Mentions of Sex, bau'verse, mentions of childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24259006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: If she's learned anything from Hollywood, it's that kidnappings and near death experiences are supposed to drive the lovers together. She sure as heck doesn't understand why it's driving them apart.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Steve Rogers/Maria Hill
Series: All The Things I Did Not See [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/347603
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	And Though You Closed Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Canon typical violence probably for both CM and MCU. 
> 
> It’s weird to come back into this fandom five years later and after what I personally feel is one of the best pieces I’ve written in 20 years of writing fic. It made writing this exceptionally daunting.
> 
> Huge thanks to J, P and S for the support and encouragement. J literally listened to all of my whining, I owe her this at least. 
> 
> Errors are mine. I tried reading it over as best I could. Gentle corrections are welcome.

“Hello Arms.”

Clint’s eyebrow rises despite himself. He figures he’s entitled given the amount of blatant appreciation in the very female voice. The owner of that voice is in possession of some lethal curves and a smirk that promises all sorts of pleasurable sins, so he feels no guilt about using the same tone when he says, “Hello Curves.”

There’s a twitch to that smirk that absolutely says she’s pleased with his response. He clocks the tablet in her hand and the sky-high heels. Not likely an agent, then. “Welcome to the BAU.”

“Hell of a welcome.” He perches himself on the edge of a nearly empty desk. The one beside it is an absolute mess of chaotic files and… schematics? “This the kind of greeting you give all your new agents?”

“Just the ones that look like they could bench me without breaking a sweat.”

“Hazing, Lewis?” Clint would be able to identify Tony Stark anywhere. That explains the schematics. “You know how Cap feels about that.”

Lewis’ pout doesn’t do much to ruin her appeal. “He’s a killjoy.”

“With superhuman ears.” Then his gaze is turned on Clint, sharp and assessing. “Barton, correct?”

Since Stark doesn’t offer a hand, Clint meets his gaze unflinchingly and crosses his arms. “Stark. Your reputation precedes you.”

“It’s all true,” comes a new voice, just as Stark is saying, “Good or bad because I know for a fact Fury lies like a rug-”

Clint raises his chin in a quick gesture of acknowledgement. Agent Barnes looks unruffled where he’s leaning on the railing of the catwalk. He gets a nod back.

“Agent Barton. Heard about your last foray into the field. Shame you couldn’t leave more carnage.”

Clint barks out a laugh. He’d wanted to leave more carnage, but he also still has people there. “Another time.”

“Oh good, you’re here. Ready to get started, Lewis?”

She actually salutes Agent Rogers and waves the tablet. “Right down to Agent Hottie’s tablet.”

“Lewis, I’m hurt. You never call me Agent Hottie-”

“A tablet?”

Her smile is smug. “The benefits of working with the creator. No paper files for the BAU.”

“Paper is so last decade-”

Lewis rolls her eyes and then nods to the conference room. “Briefing in five,” she says, already dragging Stark up the stairs, utterly unfazed by his rambling. “Bring the tablet and that fine ass.”

Then her attention turns to Stark and Clint is more than a little baffled watching them bicker as they go. A hand on his shoulder has him glancing up at Agent Rogers and while his face is grim, there’s something akin to a twinkle in his eye.

“Lewis is the best technical analyst in the Bureau,” he says. “But she can be a little much. Let me know if I need to tell her to slow it down.”

“She is something else,” Clint says and Rogers chuckles. “I think I can hold my own.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t.” Then he wrinkles his nose and Clint is struck with the humanity of it. He hasn’t been living under a rock - Stark’s reputation isn’t the only one that precedes him. “Let’s get this over with. I think it’s Louisiana and I hate the humidity.”

“More than Afghanistan?”

Rogers actually pauses, considering. “Touché.”

“You’ve reached the lair of the all-knowing and all-powerful Darcy Lewis.”

“Hey there, gorgeous girl, I need those magic fingers.”

Darcy smiles despite herself. Flirting with Clint is so goddamn easy, has been since day one, when she’d strolled into the BAU ready to present a case and been struck dumb by the arms the new recruit was showing off in a tight black t-shirt.

(Look, Darcy would like it to be perfectly clear: she works with a lot of buff and sexy men. Even Stark, though she will never admit it out loud or in any format that could be presented as evidence. Hot men and the BAU go together like fish and water.

But his _arms_.)

“Anything for you, Hot Stuff.”

And when she hangs up the phone she lets herself sigh a little. It’s always a little bittersweet when the team is off hunting serial killers. She loves the work, loves doing the good work, helping save lives – and not having to hold a gun while she does it. At the same time, she misses them. The BAU is a lot quieter without them here.

Though, she misses Clint the most.

About six months into Clint’s stint with the BAU, he disappears.

There isn’t a single person who is saying anything about what it is. She can’t hint, she can’t ask, she has no idea what’s going on. She hates it. Abhors it, but comes in every day, does her job, and resists the urge to use the access the Bureau gives her to figure out where Clint has gone. She hides it damn well, if she does say so herself.

Except, as per usual, she underestimates Sam.

Everyone underestimates Sam. It’s his superpower and he uses it for good and for evil without any discernable pattern. Like now:

“Hey,” he says, gentle when he knocks on her door. Darcy does not look away from her bank of computers. “Girl, you’re not okay.”

“I’m always okay,” she replies, all false cheer. “It’s the normal amount of worry when my favourite people go out into danger and little old me lamenting the choice of career I didn’t totally make on purpose.” 

“Darce.” There’s enough room for him to lean against her desk, facing her, arms crossed. He has the patience of a saint and she curses it now. “You know my lips are sealed.”

Darcy ignores him. Sam shifts his weight.

“It’s personal time, Darce,” he says softly. “He’s slated to be on the case with us in the next two days.”

She makes the mistake of looking over at him. Sam’s smile is gentle. Profilers. Whatever crap rule is in place about not profiling each other is broken more than Clint’s cell. And Clint’s uncanny ability to shatter phones is unrivalled.

“Groveling?”

Sam chuckles. “I think that’s up to you. Should I tell him to send a troll?”

“Coffee,” she replies, imperious. “He’ll know why.”

“Talk to me, Beauty.”

“For a price,” Darcy says, so smoothly she feels confident the hitch in her breath went unnoticed. It had been a risk, trying his phone. It’s been off for days with him gone, but she’d arrived this morning to a bright yellow cardboard coffee cup with a goddamn arrow drawn on the paper protector.

“I’ve paid in full.”

“You’ve paid twenty-five percent,” she retorts and lets her voice lower. “I’ll cash in on the other seventy-five when you’re home.”

“Hard bargain.” But she revels in the way he matches her tone, seductive and confident.

(He pays in full the night they return, shows up at her apartment of all places and almost accidentally stays the night.

But they don’t stay the night. Ever.

That sends too many messages.)

“So. Lewis, huh?”

Clint checks the magazine in his standard issue Glock. It’s Barnes’ turn to play with the sniper rifle and Clint is stuck on the ground. As Nat’s partner, which today is apparently a curse. No sniper rifle and a meddling Nat. His day could be better.

“It’s casual.”

Nat actually laughs. When he frowns, she merely presses her lips together, obviously still amused. “Clint. It isn’t.”

He doesn’t growl, but he grits his teeth like he wants to. “It is. She knows the deal.”

No strings. Nothing more than good friends, good sex, and some fun flirting in between.

“That doesn’t mean anything and you know it,” Nat replies. “She’s good, Clint.”

“I know,” he says, maybe sharper than he means to. “It’s casual. I won’t ruin her.”

“Hey.”

And that’s sympathy, surprise. Clint huffs out a sigh. “Nat-“

“I didn’t mean she’s too good for you. She’s good to you.” Her eyes are the clear green ones that are too knowing. “You can’t break her.”

He can. He knows he can.

“What do you know about her?”

Darcy comes from a good, close family. She talks incessantly about her mother, and sparingly about her father. She never talks about siblings but for every story he tells her, she has a similar one from a cousin. Her wild child years were between fifteen and eighteen. She got herself together in the last year of high school to manage to get into college. She has a degree, she has a steady job. She might be a genius but has never had it checked or tested because she thinks those tests aren’t near as important as people make them out to be. When they do debate politics or touch on controversial issues, she wields arguments like she’s campaigning for office.

“Meanwhile, I’m here because I’m a good shot.”

Her eyeroll is extraordinarily comforting. “The martyr routine doesn’t work on me, and I bet it doesn’t work on her either. Or you wouldn’t still be sleeping together.”

“She hasn’t asked.”

“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”

Because Darcy doesn’t ask. She’s very good at leading questions, excellent at making it sound like every and all information is at her fingertips. It is, Clint’s seen it millions of times. She turned it on him and on Nat in their early days with the BAU. She’s good at keeping secrets.

There’s a general commotion that distracts them both. They’re moving out and he and Nat join the local PD going through the last few details. Some check with partners, double check vests, consult the case board or Rogers himself. The latter checks in with Clint with a quick nod of his head. Clint returns it.

“Alright kids,” Stark’s voice comes over his earpiece. “No trolls today, please. Lewis’ desk is starting to get creepy.”

 _No getting shot_. The phrase is as normal and comfortable to him as the gun in his hand.

He figures that’s that. Nat is silent for the ride to their UNSUB’s house and Clint hates that he feels a little relief. He should know better, really. When they’re lined up at the UNSUB’s back door, Nat cracks her neck like she does before any takedown.

“She cornered me to ask if we were sleeping together,” she murmurs as Rogers counts down in their ears. “It’s not just friends with benefits for her, so Barney or no Barney, it’s already messy.”

“Go, go, go!”

Nat’s timing is always impeccable.

“Hey darlin’, tell me you’ve got something good.”

Darcy’s hum in his ear is probably the most comforting thing he’s heard since they boarded the plane to North Carolina. If Clint has to look at one more severed finger…

“New restaurants are not nearly as fascinating as old ones,” she replies. “And I really don’t think I’ll ever eat chili again.”

She rattles off a story about a restaurant that had been sued when a customer had found human remains in the world-famous chili. “You see my point.”

“Mama Lewis will be devastated.” Darcy laughs and his chest already feels looser. He’s ignoring the Nat in his head that’s telling him ‘I told you so’.

“Only if I go vegetarian,” she quips back. “Need anything else?”

“Your smile.”

“Flatterer.” But she’s not mad. Clint is well-versed in Darcy’s tone, and that includes the playfully coy one that infuses her voice now. “Later, Sexy.”

“Later, Gorgeous.”

Darcy has conflicted feelings about Agent Natasha Romanov.

On the one hand, the fact that she couldn’t find a damn clue as to who the woman was prior to her showing up at the BAU means she’s probably incredibly dangerous. Which automatically puts her on Darcy’s ‘Coolest Women Ever’ list. She has poise and she has grace and Darcy is only human.

At the same time, Clint responds to her with such open admiration and adoration that… Look, Darcy gets jealous. Who couldn’t? Who wouldn’t? In another life, it’s Clint’s she’s jealous of given the exceptionally different way Natasha treats him.

So, she’s jealous, which means when they all go out following Natasha’s third case with the team, she wears her favourite top - the one that barely keeps her breasts in place. She curls her hair and paints her lips and makes Jane stay with her on Facetime as she gets ready, for final approval.

She’s out to kill.

From the wolf whistle Tony awards her with when she steps into the bar, she’d been successful. It doesn’t stop her stomach from churning when she sees Natasha and Clint, heads bent together in a booth.

“Out to impress, Lewis?”

“Only your camera roll,” she replies, because she’s not here to pick up. Not really. Not unless they’re elite Bureau marksmen with shady connections to a Russian operative.

“So. You and Romanov, huh. What’s the story there?” she asks when it’s just them in the booth.

“We worked together,” he tells her, a little smirk playing over his face. Darcy though, who has been with the BAU almost too long at this point, who has spent so much time with him before Natasha showed up, can see the seriousness of what he’s saying.

Her eyes narrow. “You’re telling me you’ve never slept with her.”

“Jealous, sweetheart?”

She shivers and lets him believe it’s from the nickname. It is, but it’s also a distraction from the fact that she is jealous and she will never admit it. Not even with a gun held to her head. “You’re more into brunettes.”

His smile is sharp for a split second and she lets him slide his arm around her shoulders. “I brought Nat in,” he says, like it explains everything. Maybe it does, the trauma, the recovery. “Plus, you seen the way Barnes looks at her?”

She has. She has a bet with Tony on when that’ll explode. She can’t wait to be right.

“To confirm,” Darcy says, maybe louder than she should. “You’re not sleeping with Romanov.”

“Doll, you said it yourself: I prefer brunettes.”

She wakes when the clouds are the same colour as his sheets, and slips from the bed. Her clothes are scattered in the living room because, characteristically, he couldn’t wait until the bedroom to see her naked. She has to go back for her panties though and looks back, shoes in hand. She can see the scratch marks down his back, and knows that he has hickeys on his hips, his frankly gorgeous abs, his tight thighs.

She’s maybe a little smug as she walks out the door and into the early Virginia morning.

He almost gets shot in Tulsa and Darcy… Well, in hindsight, it’s probably called ‘losing one’s shit’.

“Darce, it’s what I do, it’s kind of my job.”

“No, your job is not to put yourself in the line of fire of a goddamn sniper to draw him out. No, that’s not how this works.”

“We had to. I fit the profile. It’s no different than Hill and Nat.”

Which is a little insulting. Not that it isn’t different - Darcy knows it isn’t - but the idea that she doesn’t show up at their places to rip them apart. She doesn’t, now, because Steve and Bucky do it for her, but that doesn’t mean that Natasha and Maria don’t show up in her lair the next day with bribery coffee to let her look them over herself. Even Bucky stops by when he’s in the line of fire so she can look him over, another troll to add to her collection always tucked away in his pocket.

She’s going to have to get one for this, when she’s done here.

“If it’s no different then you’re going to sit there and you’re going to listen!”

Clint looks at her like she’s crazy. She probably looks like she is, honestly. She’d been on comms when he’d been waiting, heard the whole damn thing including the shot that only went wide because Steve got to the guy first.

Conceivably, she shouldn’t be on the comms.

Conceivably, you can pry the comms from her cold, dead hands.

“Is this about us? We’re not dating, you’re not my girlfriend.”

And that stings in its own right, real and fresh and painful. She rears back, less so in offense than actual bone deep hurt.

“Because the only way I get a say is if we’re dating? If we’re in a relationship you’re so goddamn terrified of? Heaven forbid I care! Heaven forbid I’m a woman that gives a shit about you! Only Natasha can do that now, I guess. Screw the fact that we were friends first, I’m crossing some invisible boundary now because I care _and_ we’re sleeping together? Bullshit. It’s fucking bullshit, Clint Barton.”

“Darce-”

“No!”

It’s gratifying to see him take a step back, to maybe start to comprehend that this isn’t about what they’re not - not really.

(It is, it really is, because she knows she’s in love with him, knows that every time he pulled her close and took her home it broke her a little more.

She also knows she can’t stop loving him. She’s almost entirely convinced she never will.

She’s a bit of a glutton for punishment that way.)

“This isn’t spyland anymore,” she says, and she’s not yelling. Instead she is incredibly quiet, rage simmering down to the bare honest truth. “This isn’t a place where you have to do it all alone. You came to us. You work with us, and that means more than just going out there and being some… God.”

“I’m not a god.”

“I know that! I am very, very aware of your mortality, thank you!”

Sometimes Darcy thinks she should just put an end to the whole thing. He’ll never see it her way, never understand. Honestly, she doesn’t think he wants to. That’s the part that hurts worst of all, that he’ll go about his life thinking only Natasha cares. Or well, letting Natasha be the only one that cares.

“I’m going to go,” she finally says because she can’t be here. She’s really not sure if she’s going to slap him or kiss him and she doesn’t like either of those responses at all. “I’m going to go, and you’re going to think about what kind of right you think you have to tell me it was only about your dick and pretend that none of us matter.”

That she doesn’t matter. She figures that’s implied between the lines.

He lets her go, regardless and she hates it.

She hates the tears that burn her eyes as she waits in the lobby, forces herself to suck in a deep breath and put it away. She’d known. He’d made it clear long before _you’re not my girlfriend_ had left his lips. They were friends that fucked. Good friends that fucked and talked and watched _Buffy_ and had coffee.

So. Sometimes she thinks she should put an end to it.

She shakes her head, hair tangled from the number of times she’d tried to yank it out over the last twelve hours. There’s a hair elastic in her purse somewhere, and oh, there’s her Uber. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

She almost laughs because damn fate but he sounds like Clint. She shakes it off because she knows it’s not.

When she wakes up tied to a chair in a warehouse, she regrets it completely.

“Hi, you’ve reached Darcy Lewis. I can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message and I’ll decide if I get back to you.”

Clint blows out a heavy breath. He hates how they left things last night, hates fighting with her in general, and hates that she’s not picking up her phone even more. He hates hundreds of thousands of millions of things in this moment. He mostly hates himself though, for letting his temper get the better of him, for hurting her.

Still, he’s ready to grovel when he opens her apartment door – emergency key is hidden under the front mat, he keeps meaning to talk to her about that. She’s probably in the shower. Probably just slept in a little.

“Hey Darce, just me. We’ve been looking for you, sweet thing.” He moves swiftly through her apartment, feels his adrenaline spike when he can’t make out the sound of the shower. “You’re so late Rogers might actually give you a detention and you promised it was my turn for movie night.”

He moves through the apartment swiftly, clears rooms as methodically as he always does, eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Anything dangerous.

Then he walks into her bedroom.

The little porcelain canary sits pretty as a peach on Darcy’s perfectly made bed. 

Canaries. 

Canaries on the three bodies that make up their current case. Canary on the bed. 

Clint’s memory jars violently, him at five years old, mistaking carnies and canaries and his brother’s indulgent laugh. 

_They’re canaries, Clint. Birds. We’re not birds._

Clint can’t breathe. It can’t be. It literally cannot be. Clint should know. Clint put him away himself, with careful testimony and a promise of a new life. And he’d gotten his new life, away from the pull of his goddamn older brother.

His hands fly over the screen of his phone: _Barney has Darcy_.

Nat will know what comes next.

It happens so fast.

One minute, he’s wrestling with Barney for the control of a gun with a bullet meant for him. The next, there’s a shot and Barney cries out. He lets go of Clint and grabs for his knee. Clint immediately looks up to find Darcy, hand and gun shaking, eyes wide. The bruise on her forehead catches his eye again, makes his chest tight. 

“Shit,” he says, and glances around, kicks the gun Barney had used further across the floor.

“Oh my god.”

“Darcy-”

“Oh my god.”

“Okay, sweetheart, listen to me.”

“I shot him.”

Clint considers his options, shrugs a little. “Yeah you did.”

“I shot a gun! Who gave me a gun?”

“Pretty sure you picked it up off the ground, honey.”

She drops it like it burned her. Clint feels his shoulders sag. Darcy really, really shouldn’t hold a gun.

“Listen, can you hang on for me for another minute? Just a minute, okay? Don’t move, stay there.”

He has barely that and he knows it, but the zip ties are quick to secure on Barney’s wrists behind his back and Clint kind of wants to scream. He’s been here so long, where the hell is Nat?

When he’s sure Barney’s not going to move, he goes back to Darcy, gets his hands on her shoulders and then pulls her in close. She’s shaking so hard, shock he knows, but there’s no blanket to wrap around her. “Hey, hey. You did good.”

“I shot him!”

He laughs, and it’s not real, not by any extent of the imagination, but he does. His hands come up to cup her cheeks and he can’t stop the way his forehead presses to hers. “You saved my life.”

“FBI!”

He doesn’t drop her, not completely. He knows Wilson’s voice anyway. “Over here!”

It’s still strange, surreal and beautiful to watch Rogers, Wilson and Barnes clear a room. Clint kind of has a little bit of envy. But then Nat’s there, her hand on his arm, the other around Darcy’s waist.

“Clint Barton,” she says, low and threatening. “If you ever, ever, do that to me again, I will put a bullet through both of your palms, and snap your favourite sniper rifle in half. Do you understand?”

Darcy’s safe. He’s safe. Barney’s going to jail. His team is here. The relief makes him sag into her, and he cannot believe the indignant sound she makes as she stumbles under his weight.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The aftermath is a mess. It comes third in his books, after his own departure from his previous job, and Nat’s identical path to the Bureau. But when it comes down to it, Darcy is safe, Barney Barton is back behind bars where he belongs, and Clint - well.

Admin leave until he could clear a psych eval. Even knowing it had been coming, it stings.

“Any one of us would have done the same,” Barnes tells him after Fury had laid down the verdict. There’s fire in his eyes. Clint gets it. Between Lewis, who still hasn’t set foot in Quantico, and how much of a goddamn mess Rogers looks, Clint can understand the temper brewing under Barnes’ calm exterior. “Even Stark. Even Natalya. It’s the kind of loyalty she inspires. Hell, I heard Foster got involved and she barely leaves the lab for lunch.”

“Still went rogue.”

Barnes rolls his eyes. That had been a learning curve, understanding just how much both Barnes and Rogers actually hate the confinements of the Bureau’s red tape. Sometimes he swears half of Hill’s job is understanding how to safely and legally circumvent the rules.

“Any one of us, Barton.”

_You’re not alone._

“One day,” Stark tells him when he’s back at his desk, staring at the mess of paper and wondering where to start. Maybe Nat’ll organize his desk again if he asks nicely. It’ll take him twice the amount of time to do his paperwork if he can’t find it. “I’m going to find a way to get every single one of us drunk, maybe in Malibu, and we’re all going to share our sob stories.”

“Sob stories?” Ah, a pen.

“Romanov’s spy past, Rogers’ time in the army, Wilson’s pararescue mission gone wrong, the reason Barnes always looks so haunted when he thinks no one’s looking.” Stark shrugs. “I’ll tell anyone who asks, but the rest of you prefer pretending you’re somehow immune to trauma.”

“You’re a billionaire.”

“I was kidnapped by terrorists,” Stark says, like that isn’t a bombshell. Darcy calls them the island of traumatized misfits and, wow, it’s truer than Clint had ever suspected. “We all carry scars. We wouldn’t do this job if we didn’t.”

“She doesn’t.”

Stark eyes him for a moment. “Ask her about her dad sometime. Don’t let her brush it off.”

The father she rarely speaks of.

“Just because you’re being willfully blind to the rest of us, doesn’t mean you’re the only one with skeletons in your closet.”

“You’re not supposed to be this perceptive.”

Stark grins. “Think I could be a spy?”

Clint is startled to feel how much relief washes through him when he laughs.

“Darcy?”

There’s a sharp inhale. “Hi.”

Clint bites back a groan when he glances at the clock. “Sweetheart, it’s 4am.”

Silence reigns, though he can hear her breathe. “He’s gone, right?”

“Yeah,” he replies automatically, eyes already sliding closed. Then her words truly register and they fly open again, his body on adrenaline-induced alert. “Yes.”

“You’re sure? Because-“

“Hey, hey,” he says, sitting up now. “I’m sure. I promise.”

“You don’t promise me things,” she murmurs. Then, more of a sigh than a word, she says, “Okay.”

Clint presses his fingers to his eyes. He did this to her, gave her all new fears and nightmares. He looks up at the ceiling, utilitarian eggshell white, the same as his walls. “Want me to come over?”

He wants to see her, he realizes. It’s better to keep his distance, now that she knows everything there is to know about him, about his past, about who he is. But he can’t. He can’t. It’s Darcy. It’s Darcy and Barney didn’t break them.

 _Barney didn’t break them_.

“It’s 4am.”

It’s not a no and he knows the hesitation in her voice. She’s been stubborn about staying at her own apartment. She’d gone up against the extremely charming Thor Odinson – apparently her best friend Jane’s significant other – and won, despite the campaigns to stay at Jane’s, at least for a little while.

“I told them no,” she’d told Nat and Hill. “Barney’s not going to take anything more from me. And I love my apartment.”

“It’ll take me twenty minutes.” He’s already throwing the covers off and hoping to high heaven he’d changed out the clothes in his go bag.

“Okay.”

He’ll go, he thinks. He’ll go and make sure she’s okay. That’s all.

He doesn’t leave until eleven and resolutely doesn’t look into it too closely.

“Dr. Wanda Maximoff,” Rogers says quietly and slides a file across his desk to Clint. “Bureau approved.”

Clint sighs. “Psych.”

“Eval, at minimum. Lewis is getting one too.” He pauses. “She’s good, Barton. Buck still goes to her sometimes, just to get his head screwed on straight. Doesn’t pull her punches.” He offers Clint an odd sort of smile. “I’d kill to have her on this team, but she’s happiest in an office.”

“You giving her name to Darcy?”

Rogers nods. There’s a beat of silence while he drums his fingers on Dr. Maximoff’s file. “There’s no one I’d trust more to be thorough and true to the process without spilling national secrets all over Quantico.”

A ringing endorsement.

“I’ll make an appointment.”

Darcy never thought she’d be sick of life-affirming sex.

She cannot stay away from him. To be fair, she can’t really say she’s been trying either. Maybe she’s a glutton for punishment – though, it’s more about not really being prepared to go round after round with him about how this doesn’t change anything, it was never going to change anything, and can he please stop pretending it would. But dear god, the desperation had been amazing in the beginning, shifted beautifully to worship after that.

Now… Well sometimes Darcy does want to be shoved up against the wall, not treated like breakable glass.

“I thought he was competitive. Can’t you goad him into it?” Jane says, and bless her. Thor is still in the early stages of being enthralled with Jane and everything she is to care much about where they are. Other than not in public.

Darcy thinks that’ll change, over time. He’s got it in him. “I’ve tried. And tried, and tried. He keeps telling me we’re okay, we’re safe, we’re fine, we can take our time. Maybe I don’t want us to take our time!”

“You miss car sex.”

“Sometimes! Like, yes, we survived, we made it, and yes, okay sometimes I still have nightmares of being suspended from a warehouse ceiling but I’m here, aren’t I? I survived, we survived.”

“Did you expect him to just confess he loved you and live happily ever after?”

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? She had kind of expected Clint to get over his hang ups, now that they were gone. Or at least neutralized for the time being. For a long time coming. Darcy can’t keep herself from tracking the case. They’re talking about consecutive sentences. She’d been the only one kidnapped, but not Barney’s only victim in his vendetta to get back at his baby brother.

But Clint hadn’t done anything like that. If anything, he’d gotten worse, on admin leave with all the time in the world and still only sneaking into her room when he’s breaking apart at the seams. Or she is.

Look, Darcy knows it’s unhealthy, but what else is she supposed to do, say no? She is not that strong.

“Darce. You of all people know that trauma doesn’t work like that.”

Darcy sips her wine, leans back on Jane’s couch. “For once in my life, I want it to be like it is in the movies.”

“Give him time,” Jane replies, rests her hand on Darcy’s knee. “He wasn’t the one kidnapped, but he sees what happens to victims all the time. He’s probably still seeing you strung up in that warehouse behind closed eyes.”

“Thanks for that image.”

Jane wrinkles her nose. “What was the name of that psychologist Agent Rogers gave you?”

“I want to make something clear,” Dr. Maximoff – “Call me Wanda.” – says during Darcy’s first appointment. “The details of what we discuss in this room are and will remain completely confidential.”

“What?”

Wanda smiles. “In my experience, agents refuse to talk to me for three reasons: they resent being ordered to do it because they don’t think it will help; they refuse to believe they need it because they’re agents and somehow magically immune to trauma; or they’re afraid that anything we speak of in this room will be added to their Bureau file.”

Darcy blinks. She really hadn’t thought about that. It is by far not her first time at a psychologist. “Oh.”

“Which one is it for you?”

“None of those,” Darcy answers on reflex.

Wanda hums and sips on her tea. “Pardon me if I don’t believe that.”

He leaves her in his bed. Again. He can’t stay away. He wants to, god he wants to, but she’d almost died. It had been entirely his fault she’d come that close. He needs to make sure she’s okay. Again, and again, and again, despite his better judgment.

There’s a click as Nat picks up the phone, then a huff.

“You’re awake.”

“Nightmares.” Hers, Barnes’, it doesn’t much matter. They’re a matched set that way. “You?”

“Yeah.”

“The kidnapping?”

“We don’t get there in time.”

Nat hums sympathetically. “We did though. You did.”

“She shot him.”

“She shattered his knee, Clint. It’s hardly the headshots we’re used to taking. Plus, it’s exactly the kind of thing Hill and I have been training her for. The scariest part was probably the bang.” There’s a shift of fabric while Clint processes the fact that Darcy’s learning to shoot a gun. She really, really hates them.

“You know,” Nat says, back with him now. “I used to say a lot of the same things about myself that you’ve been saying to keep her at arms’ length.”

“If this is about to be another lecture about red in your leger-“

“Not mine,” she interrupts, a little sing-song and more than a little creepy. “Yours.”

She’s got him and they both know it, far beyond the shell-shocked numbness that seems to sweep over him. Every answer he could possibly give, ever counter argument, invalidates her journey. He, almost more than anyone, knows not only what Nat has done, but the work she put in to be her own person, making decisions for herself and surrounded by not only a man, but also a team that refuses to believe in the strength of a lone wolf.

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“Neither did you.”

Had he? He’d been orphaned so young, relied so heavily on his older brother, easily believing family stuck together, no ifs ands or buts. Had he been anything other than a little boy, learning to survive and greedy for approval? Was the mental manipulation of Trickshot much better than the physical manipulation of the Red Room?

Did he believe Nat deserved less because of the death toll she’d racked up in the name of survival?

Of course not.

So what leg did he really have to stand on in this argument?

“What if I fail her?”

“That’s not really your choice to make,” is Nat’s succinct response. “The thing about a relationship, Barton, is that trust goes all ways. You trust me to have your back, right?”

“Always.”

“So, trust her to keep your heart safe. This isn’t some random woman in a bar, this is Darcy.”

Clint runs a hand over his face and glances over his empty street. “I’ve broken everything in my life.”

“You’re a drama queen, there’s a difference.” She pauses, long enough to hear him snort in amusement. “Look, you’re on admin leave.”

It still stings. He hisses with it and can almost see her impatient eye roll. She’s done with his angsting. He doesn’t need the words, nor to see her to know that.

“Go to the farm. Take a week. Get your goddamn head on straight because the partner shifting is giving me a headache. There’s only so much of Hill and Rogers’ bickering I can take over the comms and Stark’s getting cranky about being paired with local PD all the time.”

“And Barnes?”

He can hear her smirk when she says, “We’re too good. It’s embarrassing.”

He laughs but there’s a hollowness to it. “Get my head on straight, huh?”

“Stop making decisions for her. It amounts to the same thing.”

“This isn’t her life.”

“Isn’t it?” Nat responds. “She’s here isn’t she? She did Hill’s job before her. You can’t speak out of both sides of your mouth and say she’s not strong enough to handle you, but she’s the strongest woman you know.”

“You’re the strongest woman I know.”

She makes a satisfied sound. Clint’s laughter is more real. “My point.”

Is valid.

“The farm, huh?”

“I hear fresh air is good for you.”

“What makes you think Agent Romanov is wrong?” Wanda asks him at his next appointment, calm and mild. In another life, Clint can see himself hating her with the fire of a thousand suns. In another he loves her like an annoying little sister. “Everything happened here. Some time away could do you a world of good.”

“I don’t know how to take a vacation.”

“Think of it less of a vacation and more getting some perspective.”

“That sounds nicer than ‘get your shit together’.”

She hums out a laugh, the closest she generally comes to untethered amusement. “I’ve recommended the same to Miss Lewis,” she reveals. “Though I feel she’s less receptive to the idea than you might be.”

“She has it together better.”

There’s a beat of silence that is incredibly telling before Wanda says, “I’m not at liberty to discuss my clients with other clients.”

“He thinks he’s protecting me,” Darcy tells Wanda, pacing the length of her office. “He’s always protecting me.”

“Isn’t that his job? He is an agent.”

“I’m not a victim.”

“Aren’t you?”

Darcy barks out a laugh. “I was kidnapped, yes. By his brother, yes. But I’m here, I’m safe, I’m getting the help I need to make sure that it isn’t trauma that lasts my whole life. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do it.” She looks at Wanda, strong because she is, steady because she has to be. “I don’t need saving. I don’t need protecting.”

“It is the prerogative of our loved ones to protect us.”

“At what cost?” Darcy shoots back. “Because at this point, the mental and emotional cost of protecting is not worth the effort it takes to maintain it.”

“Yours or his?”

“Both.”

Wanda hums. It’s a sound that Darcy thinks she could hear in her sleep at this point. She puts her tea aside and sits forward with an intent look on her face that Darcy has never seen. “And what are you going to do about it.”

Oh.

“Romanov.”

“Where is he?”

Natasha grins.

Darcy is the absolute last person he expects to see climbing the steps to the farmhouse, her eyes ablaze. “You ran away.”

“What?” That is the absolute last thing he would consider himself to have done when he drove up here. Here, the farmhouse, where only three people – four if he includes Fury, which he tries not to think about – know where he is.

“You ran away. You disappeared. You promised you wouldn’t do that again.”

After Nat. That had been years ago.

He doesn’t have an answer. He hates that he doesn’t have an answer.

“You’ve been running from me since day one.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“My reasons were sound.”

“They were bullshit,” she retorts, angry as hell. There’s a world where he’s too busy finding her extremely attractive like this, but it’s one where he isn’t finally, _finally_ ready to have this fight.

“I talked to Tony.”

He doesn’t swear. It’s a close thing.

“Look. Mama says that your instinctual reaction to something is society telling you what to do. Conditioning. Protect me, protect yourself, from a past that plenty of people would probably balk at. I get that.”

“Do you?”

“Clint, my father routinely told both me and Mama that we were worthless, that we’d never amount to anything of significance. I fight my own instincts every day to run away because a man who saves lives for a living is so much better than a woman that hides behind a computer screen.”

“You’re not-“

“Exactly.”

She’s got him there.

“But what you do next, what you choose to do,” she says, and her voice has dropped now to a murmur that shakes around the edges, “is the person you are.”

Clint swallows. He’s been hammered so many times, metaphorically punched in the gut, and he knows the warning signs in his body. His heart is thumping and he feels like his every emotion is written all over his face. He thinks she’s always done this to him.

“You chose me,” she says. “Every time. You held yourself back, made yourself say things about how you couldn’t, your past was too dark, everything was too dangerous, but you chose me. Every time.”

He opens his mouth to argue. She’d been there and willing. He hadn’t chosen anything so much as gone along with what she wanted.

Except that isn’t entirely true, is it? He has will power. He had will power the first night. There had been women in that bar, women he could have easily taken home and never called in the morning. But he’d chosen Darcy. He kept choosing Darcy, kept letting her lean into him when they binged movies, kept pulling her close when they were together. Hadn’t he told himself time and time again to make a different choice?

“You know how I feel,” she tells him. “You know what I want. What I still want.”

There’s emphasis on the last part that makes him shiver. She still wants him. After all of this, after facing Barney and almost being killed, here she is, telling him she still wants him. She shouldn’t.

_That’s not really your choice to make._

“I can get back in my car and go home,” she continues. “But if I do that, Clint, we’re done. I deserve better.”

That’s not an argument.

He swallows. Barney’s gone. His whole past has been thrown onto the ground for her to see. All she’s asking is for him to trust her, for him to take the risk that she can stand there with him, every piece of him. She’s never needed someone to help her fight her demons, his Darcy. He knows she’s strong enough to make sure he keeps fighting his own.

He just has to make the leap. He’s only ever had to make a leap.

“Stay.”

“You’re awake.”

Darcy glances back, his shirt hanging off her shoulder. It’s been hours now, hours where they’ve sat in the sunshine, where he’s cracked himself open and she’s done the same. Twilight has come and gone, the sun has set, and the kitchen really needs to be cleaned up after their attempt to cook dinner without getting distracted. She hopes he’ll never look at the kitchen table the same again.

Now the world is dark. She can see every single star as she looks up. She knows what she looks like, half dressed, even sitting on that bottom step, curled up as she is. It’s easy to see how much it works from him in the way he prowls toward her. “Couldn’t sleep.”

He takes the hand she holds out to him, settles on the stair above her so his legs fall around her shoulders. It’s easy to sigh and lean back against him and she does it with the freedom of knowing neither of them are second guessing anymore. “Nightmares?”

She chews her lip and picks at her fingernails. She’s always worn her heart on her sleeve, and the little ticks are less tells and more habits. He reaches down for one of her hands, threads his fingers through hers and rests it on her shoulder.

“Darce?”

“Come home with me.”

It takes him a minute to parse that. “Now?”

She swallows and nods.

“It’s two am.”

“I know,” she replies. She sounds like she knows it’s an insane idea. They’re in the middle of nowhere, it’ll take hours to get home, there’s no reason they can’t pack up in the morning, do it right. But this is a bubble. She doesn’t want the bubble. She doesn’t want to keep hearing the little voice in her head telling her that it’s only a matter of time, that when they get back to their lives, to Quantico and the BAU, that it’s all going to go back to what it was.

She’d asked him to trust her and she knows she has to do the same. She maybe just wants some reassurance.

He knows she does, of course. She can feel it when he leans down, kisses her head. “It’ll keep,” he says. “Whatever it is, it will still be there in the morning. It will still be there when we get home.”

“Promise?” She feels so weak asking. She’s given him so much.

Clint slips his fingers under her chin and makes her look at him, tilts her body back over his knee. “Darcy,” he says, and wow, wow. That level of conviction is unfair to her libido. “I promise you, Darce. I promise.”

She believes him.


End file.
